Clinical psychologist

Go back Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear (CNTW) NHS Foundation Trust

Clinical Psychologist

The closing date is 09 June 2026

Secure Care Services within Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear (CNTW) NHS Foundation Trust provide recovery-focused services to individuals with mental disorders and offending/serious risk histories across mental health, personality disorder and learning disability pathways in both inpatient and community settings.

The development of inpatient service at Northgate Park has seen the co-location of secure adult mental health, learning disabilities and personality disorder services, providing an integrated centre of excellence for those requiring secure inpatient admissions in conditions of medium and low security. Service users admitted to secure inpatient services often have highly complex needs and experience a range of difficulties including psychosis, personality difficulties, learning and developmental difficulties, as well as significant forensic issues which present risk to self and others.

Main duties of the job

We are looking to recruit a Band 7 Clinical Psychologist to our secure inpatient provision. Psychology provision is a well-established and valued component of the service model, and the post holder would be required to work effectively within and across multidisciplinary teams.

The post involves providing expertise in undertaking specialist psychological assessment, including risk assessments, collaborative formulation and interventions with service users. The role will include individual and group based therapeutic work. It will involve supporting multidisciplinary staff working with service users through formulation, training and reflective practice sessions, contributing to a service wide understanding and management of complex risk. This post would ideally suit an individual committed to embedding the delivery of trauma and recovery-informed care while promoting psychological wellbeing and reducing risk.

About us

We aim to attract and retain a diverse, talented and committed workforce, who are caring and compassionate, and therefore able to meet the demands of the modern NHS now and in the future. In return we can offer a dynamic working environment in which to build a career.

Job responsibilities

As for all psychological services staff, the post holder will participate in CPD, appraisal and other developmental activities. The post holder will be individually accountable for all clinical interventions working autonomously within professional guidelines and agreed service and Trust policies.

Person Specification

Education and Qualifications

• Doctoral level training in clinical psychology, including specifically models of psychopathology, clinical psychometrics and Neuropsychology, two or more distinct psychological therapies and lifespan developmental psychology as accredited by the British Psychological Society and the HCPC.
• HCPC registration as a practitioner psychologist
• Pre‑qualification training and qualifications in research methodology, staff training and/or other fields of applied psychology.

Knowledge and Experience

• Experience of specialist psychological assessment and treatment of clients across the full range of care settings including outpatient, community, primary care, and inpatient settings.
• Experience of working with a wide variety of client groups, across the whole life course with presenting problems that reflect the full range of clinical severity, including severe and enduring mental health problems, psychosis and personality disorder. This includes maintaining a high degree of professionalism in the face of highly emotive and distressing problems, verbal abuse and the possibility of physical abuse.
• Doctoral level knowledge of research methodology, research design and complex multivariable data analysis as practiced within the clinical fields of psychology.
• Experience of teaching, training and/or supervision.
• Experience of the application of clinical psychology in different cultural contexts.
• Knowledge of legislation in relation to the client group and mental health.

Skills and Competencies

• Skills in the use of complex methods of psychological assessment, intervention and management. Skills in evidence based psychological interventions.
• Well‑developed skills in the ability to communicate effectively, orally and in writing, complex, highly technical and/or clinical sensitive information to clients, their family, carers and other professional colleagues both within and outside the NHS.
• Skills in providing consultation to other professional and non-professional groups.

Role / Team specific requirements

• Ability to teach and train others, using a variety of complex multimedia materials for presentations within public, professional and academic settings.
• Ability to identify and employ mechanisms of clinical governance as appropriate to support and maintain clinical practice in the face of regular exposure to highly emotive behaviour.
• Experience of working within a multicultural framework.

Disclosure and Barring Service Check

This post is subject to the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act (Exceptions Order) 1975 and as such it will be necessary for a submission for Disclosure to be made to the Disclosure and Barring Service (formerly known as CRB) to check for any previous criminal convictions.

Address

Northgate Park

Adult Forensic Service, Sycamore, Northgate Park